The journalist's despite?
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According to a recent BoingBoing segment,
Ballots for a special election in England's Clacton-by-Sea are the longest ever produced in U.K. electoral history despite¹ only one major party contesting the race.
The footnote:
1. This is the journalist's despite, wherein the word implies disregard when there is in fact a blatant causal relationship.
I'm puzzled by the idea that only journalists use despite to "[imply] disregard when there is in fact a blatant causal relationship". In fact, most uses of the word seem to fit that description, except where the "disregard" is relative to an asserted connection whose causal (or even statistical) validity the author doesn't believe.
Doug said,
August 3, 2026 @ 9:08 am
I do not think that "most uses of the word" illustrate the usage here ascribed to journalists.
Journalists are being accused of using "despite" when really further thought would reveal that they ought to use "because of."
The usual implication of "X happened despite Y" is that you would expect that Y would make X less likely, but surprisingly X happened anyway.
So anyone who wrote "Ballots … are the longest ever produced in U.K. electoral history despite only one major party contesting the race" is apparently saying "Gee, without the usual major parties contesting the race, you'd think the ballot would be short." The author's point is that it is precisedly because of the absence of major-party opposition, not despite that absence, that all sorts of eccentric minor candidates are joining the race, leading to the longest ballot in UK history.
wgj said,
August 3, 2026 @ 9:58 am
It's an accusation of click-baiting. The causal correlation is negative at first glance, but positive upon further consideration. "The journalist" is deliberately choosing to depict the superficial perspective because contradiction grabs more attention.
J.W. Brewer said,
August 3, 2026 @ 10:20 am
The causal hypothesis that a major-party boycott of a UK parliamentary bye-election will induce a greater-than-average number of fringe/joke candidates seems plausible, but there are so few prior historical instances of the scenario that it's not like this is an iron law of political science, much less one well-known to the average UK newspaper reader.* That four-or-five "name brand" parties that you would expect to field candidates at a typical bye-election are not on the ballot but those omissions are more than outweighed by the boom in outsiders seems like a perfectly newsworthy fact to report, and carping about the exact phrasing seems petty.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Haltemprice_and_Howden_by-election is one of the handful of earlier examples (if you ignore the party affiliation of the winner) and did indeed attract a then-record number of fringe/joke candidates.
Peter Grubtal said,
August 3, 2026 @ 11:34 am
For me the problems don't start with "despite" but with:
"Ballots for a special election in England's Clacton-by-Sea are the longest ever "
I just don't know what a long ballot is: the period in which you can cast your vote? Or something else which escapes me.
Peter Grubtal said,
August 3, 2026 @ 11:50 am
looking again at Doug's post, is it meant to say that the number of candidates is especially high?
Doug said,
August 3, 2026 @ 12:13 pm
Yes, the number of candidates is large, thus making the actual paper ballot literally long:
"The longest ballot paper in British political history is costing four times as much to print than regular ballot papers, the local council has said.
The list for the Clacton parliamentary by-election, which was prompted by the resignation of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, is 90cm (3ft) long.
When people unfold the paper, they will find it is longer than most adults' arms."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyem5lg78qo
Haamu said,
August 3, 2026 @ 7:30 pm
The footnote reads as though "the journalist's despite" is a Known Thing, kind of like the greengrocer's apostrophe. But according to the Google, it is not. The only ghits are that footnote and this blog.
JPL said,
August 4, 2026 @ 2:15 am
The normal sense of 'despite' is "contrary to the warrant"; the fact described in the main clause is a violation or exception to the general rule (thus normal expectations) applying to special elections ballots and party participation. No need for a footnote; what follows should be an explanation. (The non-party additions)
Kate Bunting said,
August 4, 2026 @ 4:10 am
It's Clacton-ON-Sea.
David Marjanović said,
August 4, 2026 @ 5:51 am
Is that a new eggcorn? I like it already.
J.W. Brewer said,
August 4, 2026 @ 8:18 am
@David M.: "Bye-election" is a well-established orthographic variant although apparently per the google books ngram viewer a minority one subsequent to the 19th century. Wikipedia asserts it's still the standard spelling in the Republic of Ireland and some corpus skimming seems to suggest it was the standard in Sierra Leone some decades ago. It's not a word used in AmEng in reference to local electoral phenomena (we would just say "special election"), so we don't really have an orthographic standard for it.
Philip Taylor said,
August 4, 2026 @ 12:07 pm
Two of the five quotations adduced by the OED use the "bye-" variant :
J.W. Brewer said,
August 4, 2026 @ 12:54 pm
Here's an Irish government website confirming what I said above re the "bye" spelling still being current there.* https://www.electoralcommission.ie/bye-election/ In Gaeilge the word is "corrthoghchán."
*The extra orthographic "e" is perhaps parallel to the Irish (and American) preference for "whiskey" over "whisky."
Steve said,
August 4, 2026 @ 2:08 pm
it seems to me that if one would usually expect X to occur when Y happens, and X didn't happen even though Y did, it is reasonable to use despite to note this discrepancy, even if, in a particular case, due to various unusual circumstances, what happened isnt really that surprising, and in fact is predictable.
To use a made up example: Despite outspending his opponent 10 to 1 in the run up to the gubernatorial race, Carl received less than 5% of the vote.
Even if "Carl" is a lousy candidate for various reasons and it isnt surprising that he got roundly defeated, "despite" sets up a contrast between how much he spent on the campaign versus how poorly he did. And even if his massive spending backfired and was a major reason why he lost, i think "despite" is still a reasonable word choice.
in the particular case in this post, i dont know enough about the relevant political system to know if you would generally expect fewer parties participating to equal more candidates appearing on a ballot, or not.
Jonathan Smith said,
August 4, 2026 @ 2:41 pm
What Steve said; clearly it would be dumb to say "longest ever produced in U.K. electoral history because there's only one major party contesting the race" as the footnote (given "blatant") implies should be great.
So this is the bitter academic's footnote, cracking wise about word choice when (usually) he can't manage any substantive critique.
John Swindle said,
August 4, 2026 @ 3:42 pm
@wgj Not only “the journalist” likes to do that. I’ve never been a school teacher, but I wonder whether it might not also be a student essayist’s “despite”. “Despite George Washington being the first President of the United Stats, Washington state was not the first to join the union.”